


The Lighthouse

by thegrumblingirl



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Daud: No more killing. Unless Corvo asks me to., Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, High Chaos Corvo Attano, High Chaos Emily Kaldwin, Kingsparrow Island, Low Chaos Daud (Dishonored), Not A Fix-It, POV Daud (Dishonored), Possible Character Death, Unintentional Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 02:08:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30014499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: The storm’s too heavy for Samuel to take them back across the river — he turned the boat back out after dropping them off, giving Corvo a look that spoke so deeply of disappointment Daud felt it even if Attano might have been past the need for it. Daud can only hope that the old boatman saw the signs in the clouds and returned to the city’s estuaries for safe harbour. The lighthouse was too far out to risk it; and yet also too far out at sea to be comfortable there in the midst of this angry, wailing wind. There’s no solace to be found here tonight, Daud decides as he watches the waves being whipped against the rock, spray and foam being cast high along the wind. It’s not a decision he makes for himself — not a choice regarding his own conduct. There’s nothing he can do that will save him tonight.
Relationships: Corvo Attano & Daud, Corvo Attano & Emily Kaldwin, Past Corvo Attano/Jessamine Kaldwin - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	The Lighthouse

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the tags/warnings. If you're looking for a solid happy ending, this is not the place. If you're looking for some sweet, sweet desolation, then read on!
> 
> I made a little ebook of it [here](https://jmp.sh/0yqBIkj), and here are some [tunes](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ZRC5C7ZHENGg9NX5AFcfx?si=ZaJkg-OaSbOBiZ8oHD6Sfg) that will hurt you some more. See how I take such good care of you?

Kingsparrow Island.

Martin, Pendleton, and Havelock are dead. Around them, the storm is raging, and behind Daud, Corvo is doing his best to wrap half a dozen towels around a chittering Princess — Empress, she would be soon — to try and get her warm and dry faster.

“You need to get her out of those clothes,” Daud rumbles, albeit he understands that his advice isn’t highly sought after in this situation. Father and daughter, only just reunited, are caught up in their own little world, and it doesn’t include him; doesn’t hold space for anyone but them after all they’ve lost. Daud wonders whether Havelock and the others realised this, too, soon after getting the girl to the Hound Pits, and whether that was when the plan was hatched to get rid of Attano.

Havelock nearly took her with him into the abyss — Daud’s pistol had stopped his crazed rambling before he could do it himself, denied the same fate Martin chose if only for expediency’s sake, but it was Corvo who made the leap to save her. Daud would admit that his heart had never sat so high in his throat as that moment, not even when Corvo had stood and judged the value of his life just a day before.

The storm’s too heavy for Samuel to take them back across the river — he turned the boat back out after dropping them off, giving Corvo a look that spoke so deeply of disappointment Daud felt it even if Attano might have been past the need for it. Daud can only hope that the old boatman saw the signs in the clouds and returned to the city’s estuaries for safe harbour. The lighthouse was too far out to risk it; and yet also too far out at sea to be comfortable there in the midst of this angry, wailing wind. There’s no solace to be found here tonight, Daud decides as he watches the waves being whipped against the rock, spray and foam being cast high along the wind. It’s not a decision he makes for himself — not a choice regarding his own conduct. There’s nothing he can do that will save him tonight.

His fate is, once again, in Corvo’s hands.

He’s fulfilled his purpose, his promise, given willingly but taken only at the tip of a sword. There’s nothing left to save, and even less to say.

“Kill the rest of them,” a stark voice says from behind him, and it takes Daud a moment to realise that there’s no-one but him Corvo’s giving orders tonight. If Curnow were here, that might be different; but as things stand, it’s not yet the Whalers who will die. Not today. Perhaps tomorrow. For now, Corvo needs Daud yet more than he despises the Order.

“The guards?” Daud asks as he turns.

“All of them. Guards, Overseers. Every last one.” Corvo looks him in the eye. “They all have crimes to pay for.”

“Yes, let’s not call it sins, shall we,’ Daud returns — a fruitless challenge. Corvo’s gaze darkens, and so does the Empress’ beside him.

“They deserve it,” she says, and the way Daud even now can see her mother behind her eyes freezes the blood in his veins.

“And what will you do?” he does his best to tilt the tip of the blade, but he knows he doesn’t have the same power, here. If he ever had any.

“Decide.”

“How to take back the throne?”

“Who says I want it?” the Empress — the girl — reveals his presumptions and upends them in the same breath; tossing them into the wind for good measure.

“I see,” says Daud, and it’s about all he can say; or else all the thoughts careening through his head will come tumbling out at once. _What did I go to all this trouble for, then?_ But even now, he knows why. He knows why he hunted down Delilah, and why he saved the girl from a living death as the witch’s puppet. For her to be free.

And for his own freedom, too, even if it’s to be found in a watery grave.

“I see,” he says, and turns on his heel to go and do as he’s told.

* * *

The work is grim, and it’s nothing that hasn’t been demanded of him before — only this time, he’s not paid for it. If anything, he expects to be paid for the deed in blood: his own. It’s work he hasn’t done since that day. The Whalers hadn’t bet on _her_ being their final job, their last big score; they were never that naive and Burrows didn’t pay that well. But they’d known they’d have to lie low for at least a while, and so Daud had set a moratorium on assassination contracts that, in the end, he never lifted. They’d had more than enough blackmail on the books, and enough… watching to do. Just keeping an eye on Attano had been a full-time job for three of them for weeks. He’s almost sure now that Lurk worked off the books during that time, if not for bloodthirsty nobles looking to make a play, then for Delilah and her coven. Some of the others, too, perhaps.

He moves silently, methodically. They don’t see him coming. They have no chance to run. He’s never been a hunter that toys with his prey, but he certainly has no desire to be tonight. Corvo needs the job done, and he’s chosen Daud to be his agent. That’s all there is to it.

Like as not, one day some poor bastard is going to find his broken body in the Void and wonder who he was. Names like his tend to be forgotten. It’s the terror that it leaves behind that will make a spectre of his shadow.

* * *

When the last of them are gone, he’s glad that the elevator still works despite the storm — he doesn’t fancy climbing the towering structure while its creaking in the wind. It’s built too tightly, not an ounce of give to let the steel bend. It’ll break in half before the worst of the storm can reach them.

Once he’s up top, he finds Attano and the Kaldwin girl having assembled all available blankets, food and water around the big centre table. They seem determined not to let him starve, but Daud knows better than to take it for a kindness. If any of Havelock or Pendleton’s remaining allies see fit to send reinforcements once the sky clears, or if, by some wonder, Martin’s Overseers come looking for him, Corvo needs Daud in fighting shape. Though if they don’t…

It’s only when Daud has downed a finger of the whiskey Corvo pressed into his hand without a word that he wonders if it’s poisoned, too. He remembers his Whalers fishing Attano out of the river by his bootstraps, marked hand trailing in the water as though hoping something might reach up from the depths and tear them all asunder. But he’s still standing a minute later, and so he decides to have some of the rations, too. The girl watches him as though she’s on the verge of having Corvo throw him out into the hail.

There’s several rooms tucked away up here, and the girl and her bodyguard will take the one that they have the keys to. Daud’s to be left to his own devices like a dog tucked in next to the wood stove in the night, and it suits him fine. Not much harm he can do, he’s sure Attano’s reasoning with himself. They all know that if it’s a locked door that’s meant to keep him from his target, it’s nought but a courtesy if it does.

The heaviness of the air in the room attests to just how aware each of them is of the fact.

* * *

A few hours later, Emily is presumably safely tucked in and asleep, and Daud is up by the curved glass roof of the structure, sitting on top of the unreasonably tall shelves and watching the waves crash and fold in and on top of themselves below. He doesn’t hear Corvo’s footsteps until it’s almost too late and the Void settles beside him with a disturbance of air.

He's not so sure he'll survive the night, reinforcements be damned. Corvo’s already shown he doesn’t care for witnesses.

He sits there beside Daud, not speaking, and it’s more than once that Daud’s wondered whether those six months in Coldridge might have rendered him mute, before the end. When he speaks, it’s hollow and reluctant, as though dredged up from the depths, rasping and stilted, a memory of the mechanics of it rather than language. Daud found one of Havelock’s journals at the Hound Pits, and the passages describing Corvo’s gaze on them, impenetrable even without the mask and its reflective lenses, showing you the last thing you’ll know before you die for your sins, myriad and constant, chilled Daud to the bone. He knows that gaze, too, but Corvo’s not where he’s first seen it.

Corvo’s not the man he was. Some of the Whalers, in moments of unobserved (or so they thought) discussion, would ponder whether he’s still a man at all. The shadow of a man that came to them that day, it might have proved them wrong. It might have proved them right.

“Would you take her away, after this?” Daud finally asks the only question that’s worthwhile entertaining. He can’t muster curiosity so much as it’s seeking understanding. Certainty, to a point. With Attano, it’s all managing expectations.

Corvo turns that gaze on him, silently.

“I think you owe this city no more than what you’ve given it. Either of you,” Daud says, answering the question he knows has been returned to him.

“And what do you owe this city?” Corvo drives in the point.

“Its people? Or its Empress, for as long as she holds that title?” _Or the rats, or the dead in the street, or all the ones I’ve sent to the Void while they were begging me to stay my hand? For their families, for the work they were yet to do?_ Had any of _them_ begged Attano? “What do I _owe_ you, Corvo?”

“Except the truth?” The clouds move in Attano’s eyes. Even as he is now, he clings to what Daud said when he first entered the Chamber. _I’ve never lied to you._ Perhaps he likes to forget what else he said.

“I know a great deal, bodyguard,” Daud repeats those words, sees Corvo’s hand twitch with the effort of not reaching for the sword that Daud took from him in a futile attempt at mitigating the fallout of a war between two men. “And I know what I owe each and every one. The dead, the living, separate and in sum. You see, I did the accounts before you dropped into my lap like dead sodding weight. I knew who you were and what you are, and if you seek to make yourself my reckoning, I will know why reckoning has come: because I invited it.”

“You asked for your life. Was that a lie?”

“There was more work to be done.” Daud means the girl, he means the traitors, he means the bodies lying down at the foot of the lighthouse like offerings to an uncaring god.

“Is that work done now?” Like a train on a track, Corvo drives towards his conclusion without hope of misdirection except through calamity. And Daud has no wish to bring more of it — to this moment, or to Corvo’s life. It would destroy him. It would destroy the girl.

“I deserve what’s coming,” Daud says, sure of it. “My people don’t.” It’s not a plea, but he knows Corvo will tear from the words what he wants and discard the rest.

Corvo responds, in the end, with a hum.

* * *

When the dawn comes, the storm has moved on. The sun rises in Daud’s eyes as grey as the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, who's not dead? Sound off.
> 
> Daud:


End file.
